To talk or not to talk? That is the question, but with nothing but dodging from Florida, the blogosphere is more than happy to answer.

While Tiger maintains his silence, or his roundabout explanation that fuels guilt and scandal yet explains nothing, has this mega-superceleb squeaky clean sure thing fallen like … like … Kobe and Phelps and Serena and Michael Vick and Britney and Chris Brown and Kanye and … and … well, you get the drift.

Celebrity endorsements mean a big cha-ching for product placement and sales. Celebrities are a brand onto themselves, as corporations are quick to scoop up the good ol’ boys and girls to be their shining star. But who calculates the missteps? What is the cost of damage control — the necessary clean ups in Aisle Life – when the star crashes to earth?  Or into the neighbor’s tree?

Tiger screwed up (or perhaps he didn’t). We don’t know how or why or when or what, but his silence is deafening. And the corporate bigwigs are squirming big time. Buick, Nike, Gatorade, Gillette, TAG Heuer, Accenture, AT&T.  Is this fixable? What’s it going to cost?  What’s plan B for when the best and brightest prove to be all too human? The brands Tiger represents are now running through the “what if” scenarios, praying for a minor character flaw and not a shock and awe to their brand image.

Sure, celebs of yesteryear were only human too. But that was before Twitter, Facebook, TMZ, MySpace, breaking news all night and all day, and with a buzz of a CNN update, dirty laundry is spilled for all to see.

Speak now, Dear Mr. Clean, or others will speak for you. The blogosphere is erupting. If Tiger doesn’t talk, others put words into his mouth and ergo, the mouths of his sponsors. And the many, many customers are just waiting and listening, wallets in hand.

Branding starts at the top and lives at the bottom.

What does that mean?

It means that a CEO or senior management might develop and launch a new “brand promise” initiative (the main thing that the company stands for), but it’s the salespeople and customer service people, the employees on the the front line of the organization, who are the ones that ultimately will deliver on that promise.

One of the keys to ensuring a successful launch of a new brand initiative is to make sure that the people who are on front lines of your customer interaction are involved early on with the process. Their input will ensure that you are not making a promise to your customers that you can’t deliver consistently. And, it being part of the process will give your salespeople and customer service people a sense of ownership with the brand promise and will more likely deliver your company’s promise with “on-brand behavior.”